themselves into a wild and ecstatic raving, which seemed almost a
demoniacal possession, leaping, howling, lacerating their flesh. Many
seemed to lose all self-control. The younger English-speaking Indians
generally lend themselves charily to such superstitious work,
especially if American spectators are present, but even they were
carried away by the old contagious frenzy of their race. One stripped
off a broadcloth coat, quite new and fine, and ran frantically yelling
and cast it upon the blazing-pile. Another rushed up and was about to
throw on a pile of California blankets, when a white man, to test his
sincerity, offered him $16 for them, jingling the bright coins before
his eyes, but the savage (for such he had become again for the
moment), otherwise so avaricious, hurled him away with a yell of
execration and ran and threw his offering into the flames. Squaws,
even more frenzied, wildly flung upon the pyre all they had in the
world--their dearest ornaments, their gaudiest dresses, their strings
of glittering shells. Screaming, wailing, tearing their hair, beating
their breasts in their mad and insensate infatuation, some of them
would have cast themselves bodily into the flaming ruins and perished
with the chief had they not been restrained by their companions. Then
the bright, swift flames with their hot tongues licked this 'cold
obstruction' into chemic change, and the once 'delighted spirit' of
the savage was borne up....

"It seems as if the savage shared in Shakspeare's shudder at the
thought of rotting in the dismal grave, for it is the one passion of
his superstition to think of the soul of his departed friend set free
and purified by the swift purging heat of the flames, not dragged down
to be clogged and bound in the moldering body, but borne up in the
soft, warm chariots of the smoke toward the beautiful sun, to bask in
his warmth and light, and then, to fly away to the Happy Western Land.